


An Argument for East Coast Graduate Education

by comefeedtherainn



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 11:03:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9120826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comefeedtherainn/pseuds/comefeedtherainn
Summary: Ransom is looking at medical schools nationwide. Holster is not subtle about his personal preferences.





	

Adam Birkholtz is starting to realize that pretty much everything he loves hurts a little.

Hockey hurts pretty much everywhere, musicals hurt his heart, numbers and the complex machine of the global economy hurt his goddamn brain – and Justin Oluransi hurts his soul. Mostly in the good way, but sometimes in a not-so-great way.

Like now, as he peruses the latest list of accredited medical schools and chatters brightly about ones across the country, Ransom doesn’t realize that he’s repeatedly shanking Holster in his fragile heart. Holster realizes it’s pretty unfair to feel that way, since Ransom really should apply to every school he has a chance with, but _California? Washington? Hawaii?!_ Does Ransom not realize how far those places are? How far they are from Adam?

Adam takes a deep, silent breath as he watches Justin scroll away on his computer, inputting data into his Med School excel spreadsheet. It’s unfair, yes, but he can’t help it. After years of just being bros and hooking up while they were drunk and pretending it wasn’t weird they had _finally_ gotten their shit together, and Holster wants to keep Ransom close, hold him tight to his chest and never let him go. But graduation is looming, and he has job offers on the east coast and he has to pursue them, he can’t not pursue them. Who knows when more will come along?

“I’m gonna go to the gym, babe. Wanna come?” he says, instead of the millions of thoughts flying around inside of his head.

“Huh? Oh.” Ransom hesitates, looks like he’s about to decline, then closes his mouth. He’s been working on this; assessing himself and deciding if he needs a break instead of pushing through his human needs like he has super powers. “Sure. That sounds good,” he decides, saving his spreadsheet before climbing to his feet. He pecks Holster’s cheek swiftly on his way to change into appropriate clothes, making Holster’s heart thud once noisily.

He glances briefly at Ransom’s laptop, struck by inspiration, and waits until Justin has left the room to retrieve his gym clothes from the demon dryer before sitting on the bed and opening it. He continuously glances at the door as he scrolls through what he needs and prints a few things off, snatching the papers off the machine and stuffing them into a desk drawer just before Rans comes back through the door. “Ready?” he asks, smiling innocently.

 

* * *

 

 

Ransom returns to the Haus from class the next day around noon; he only goes to this one because the professor is a prick and actually factors participation points into the final grade. He enters the attic, finding it empty. While he prefers to take morning classes and get them over with, Holster likes to sleep, and so they always have opposite class schedules. He goes to toss his backpack onto his bed and pauses, blinking a few times as he spots a crappy-quality, home-printed pamphlet resting delicately on his pillow. He raises an eyebrow, picking it up and realizing that it’s for Drexel University, one of the schools he was looking at in Philadelphia. Which…okay, weird. The only person he’d really been discussing his med school options with was Holster, and Holster knows that he’s been all over every single school’s website that he’s considering, printing off pages and pages of stats and curriculum and student societies. So why would he print off a pamphlet?

With a shake of his head Rans sets it aside on the desk, flopping down onto the bottom bunk (he never bothers with the top one these days) and closing his eyes. He figures he can get a quick nap in before starting on some work later in the afternoon. Holster would be home by then to cuddle him while he wrote out his flash cards; that was always nice.

He sleeps for an hour or so, waking to the sound of the alarm he’d set to make sure he didn’t wake up when it was dark out (that had happened once, and the resulting panic attack had been less than ideal). He hums and frowns as he rubs his face wearily, blinking up at the ceiling until he feels like a real person. With more effort than expected, he swings his legs over the edge of the bed and drags himself onto his feet. He makes his way downstairs while yawning widely and stretching his arms over his head, shuffling into the kitchen and more than a little surprised to find no blonde bakers inside. _Oh, right. It’s a Providence weekend._

He’s just about to mourn the lack of pies in his hour of need when he opens the fridge to find three, pre-baked and wrapped up tightly with a sticky note stuck on top of the pile, a heart-shaped smiley face drawn on. How can someone that dances so dirty and chirps so viciously be so damn adorable? Ransom grins fondly and takes a piece of the cherry one, heating it up in the microwave and snapping a picture to send to Bitty, alongside about seventy four heart emojis.

Before sitting down to inhale his pie and enjoy the rare silence of the mostly empty Haus, he turns toward the coffee maker to pump himself full of enough caffeine to get him through the rest of the day. He pauses, hand in mid-air as he reaches for the coffee grounds, and narrows his eyes as he spots _another_ pamphlet – this one, for Brown University. Another east coast school. He’s starting to think there might be a bit of a pattern, but maybe Holster just really thought he’d like these schools in particular. He tries not to be too suspicious, setting that pamphlet aside as well and pouring himself a gigantic mug of black coffee.

It is less easy to think nothing of it when he finds two more pamphlets, one in the bathroom and one in the living room. He’s just finishing reading the one he’d found stuck in the diseased couch, lips slightly pursed, when Holster pushes past the front door. His cheeks and the tips of his ears are slightly pink from the wind, and Ransom has to force himself not to be distracted by how adorable his stupid boyfriend is – he has to be confrontational. “Hey, babe,” Holster greets with a smile, hanging up his keys and jacket on the hooks near the door.

“Hey. What the hell is this?” Ransom asks, getting right to the point as he holds up the clearly home-printed and hastily folded pamphlet.

“…looks like a pamphlet for Columbia,” Holster says casually, still wearing that easy smile.

“Don’t bullshit, man,” Ransom huffs, crossing his arms. “I know it was you.”

“Yeah,” Holster nods, and Rans blinks hard. Well, he didn’t think he’d get a confession that easily. “Oh, that reminds me, I have a slideshow I wanted to show you.”

“…a what?” Ransom deadpans, staring as Holster fishes a fucking USB drive out of his backpack – what the fuck, Holster – and brings his laptop over to the couch. “Adam, what are you doing?”

“Sh, just sit down,” Holster insists, grabbing his hand and tugging him until he sinks down onto the couch beside him. He searches his folders for a moment, and swiftly brings up a slideshow entitled “An Argument for East Coast Graduate Education – compiled by Adam Birkholtz for (future) Dr. Justin Oluransi.”

Ransom can’t help the quirk at the corners of his mouth at that, his boyfriend is so _lame_ why is he like this, and lifts his eyes to the ceiling. “What the hell is –“

Holster shushes him quickly, starting to click through the slides. Rans isn’t paying super close attention, mostly just humoring his weird boyfriend in whatever point he thinks he’s making. He perks up a little when he gets to the last slide, basically outlining the fact that Holster is on the east coast, and Ransom needs someone to take care of him, so clearly he should stay where Holster is. That, and the ten bullet point list of reasons why Holster would miss him, is enough to make him frown deeply, staring at the side of Holster’s head until his boyfriend notices and meets his eyes.

“…what?” Holster asks, looking at him with round, confused eyes.

“I…Adam, what the hell?” Ransom asks, frowning even further and leaning away from him a little.

“Are you mad?” Holster sounds so genuinely confused that Ransom almost wants to laugh. Almost.

“Uh, a little, dude.” He stares at Holster, waiting for him to just fucking get it, but he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t, Ransom is dating a gigantic idiot. “Adam, I told you I wasn’t just considering the east coast for grad school. You said you respected that, what happened?”

“I do respect that, babe, I’m just –“

“Bro, this is such a fucking guilt trip I can’t even explain it in words!” Ransom huffs, gesturing angrily at Holster’s computer. “And what the fuck – I need someone to take care of me so I should stick close to you?! You gotta know that’s messed up.”

“I didn’t – it sounds bad when you say it like that,” Holster mutters, avoiding Ransom’s eyes.

“That’s because it is bad! That’s a fucked up thing to say to someone,” Ransom snaps, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’ve helped me a lot, Adam, you really, seriously have. But I am not gonna plan my whole life around you just so you can hold me when I get a fucking C on a paper.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Holster insists sadly, turning to face him completely and setting the computer aside. “I get why you’re mad. I went about this the completely wrong way.”

“What the hell did you mean then?”

“I just…” Holster sighs heavily, chewing on the inside of his lip. “I want to take care of you. And I want you to take care of me. I don’t know how I would survive without you with me, Justin.”

“Adam,” Ransom groans, letting his head fall onto the back of the couch. “ _That’s_ fucked up, too. That’s some codependence shit if I ever heard it.”

“It’s not, though!” Adam argues, bristling a bit. “It’s not codependent to want to wake up to you every morning and kiss you every night and hold you when you get a fucking C on a paper, Justin. At least, I don’t think it is.”

“I don’t want to be this person, though.” Ransom speaks mostly to the ceiling, having a hard time meeting Holster’s eyes while being so honest. “I don’t want to be the person that decides where to move and where to go to school and what to do with my life based on a _guy_.”

“…I didn’t realize I was just a guy,” Holster mumbles, watching Ransom not look at him. It hurts, everything he loves hurts a little.

“No,” Ransom says immediately, turning his head to finally meet his eyes. “You’re not. That was mean. I just…this is such a big deal, Holtzy. And I’m scared of limiting myself. What if I don’t get in anywhere on the east coast? What do I do then?”

“…I don’t want to hold you back,” Holster mumbles dejectedly. “You’re right. This is big, I mean its med school. You can’t limit yourself. I’ll…I can visit, depending on where you end up. If you end up in California or something I’ll just…I’ll make it work, maybe once or twice a month or something, and skype dates all the time, and I’ll send you fucking flowers at your apartment and – “

“Why can’t you just come with me?”

Holster shuts up instantly, staring at him blankly. They haven’t discussed that as an option. Holster had his plan to stay close to New York, close to his family. But then, Justin is his family, too. Justin is the other half of his soul, his greatest source of pain and pleasure. Why shouldn’t Holster follow him to the ends of the earth if that was where he wanted to go?

“You…you’d want me to come with you?”

“Well, yeah,” Ransom says softly, watching him with gentle eyes. “Why not? You can get a job pretty much anywhere with your degree. And we are a good team. We take good care of each other.”

“I didn’t think you’d want me there. I mean like, _there_ there. Living with you. I thought you’d want time on your own.”

“What the hell would I want that for?” Ransom laughs quietly, scooting close to him until their thighs were pressed together. “I’m so used to living with you now it’d probably throw off my whole ecosystem.” They both laugh, turning to face each other and Ransom closing his eyes as Holster brushes his knuckles against his sharp cheekbone. “I know you wanted to be near your family, though.”

Holster shrugs, pulling a face. “I did. But what’s another five years?” he says with a small grin. “We can move to Buffalo after you graduate. I just want to be close to you, babe.”

“I could live with that,” Ransom grins, leaning forward and pressing their foreheads together.

“Love you,” Holster murmurs, kissing him gently between his eyes.

“Love you too, you goddamn nerd,” Ransom snickers, beaming up at him. “Thank you. You always have my back.”

“Come hell or high water,” Holster agrees, smiling widely.

“…so are you gonna make a fucking slideshow for every decision we have to make, or…?”

“Are you gonna make an excel spreadsheet?”

“…point taken.”

“Love you.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come scream with me on tumblr! http://comefeedtherainn.tumblr.com/


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